


Macabre Waltz

by chewysugar



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Isolation, Madness, Spoilers, Tragedy, War of the Spark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 12:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18699985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: It all slipped through her fingers, but she can rebuild it to suit her ends.





	Macabre Waltz

A world of dust to house the wielder of death. It was a fitting plane—gray and lifeless. Not like Amonkhet, which had pulsed with the pitiful beat of the once-vital. This place was void of anything but hills of corpse-shale and a sky without a sun. Liliana may have been the only thing with blood and a heartbeat to ever set foot on the place.

And an unsteady foot it proved to be. Her legs betrayed her, and she sank to the ground. The punishment was earned for one who couldn’t display fealty if her unnaturally prolonged life depended on it. Her body should turn on her—her mind certainly was.

Not a sound disturbed the endless stretch of vacant landscape; but screams echoed in Liliana’s mind—fragments of pleas and rallying cries: Bolas roaring in defeat as Bontu tore through his body; Ajani snarling as he charged the tyrant’s hoarde; and hundreds upon thousands of innocents gurgling their last breaths.

And there, buried beneath it all, the rumbling eddy of a voice that had brought her comfort as much a vexation.

“Do what’s right. You have it in you. You know you do.”

Liliana clutched her hair.

_Get out_ , she thought frantically. _Get out of my head, all of you._

She could still feel his hand on her shoulder. Like the rest of his body, it had crumbled away, turning to scraps of fiery ash. That punishment had been meant for her. She was the one fated to die. At that point, it had been her only aim—do something right, and pay the price for it. But of course that stupid, honorbound, bovine lummox had to best her—had to sacrifice himself without even asking her permission.

Liliana beat her hands against the surface of the soft, pliant ground. The shimmering spark circled her head, fluttering more like a butterfly than the essence of evil. It’s light illuminated the dead lands far and wide. But to her, it seemed to gloat—to whisper with each shimmer of its life force, “Are you satisfied, oh great and beautiful deathless one? Was it worth it, in the end?”

“Leave me alone,” Liliana spat. “Leave me!”

But the spark hovered only closer.

Perhaps she could have steered the course in an alternate direction. She, who spent so much time among the deceased and malleable, had never seen the living as anything other than amusing. And yet the loss of a friend still held the power to render her so bloody infantile.

Ah yes. A path. A way to escape this wretched, useless nuisance called grief. It was their fault—Jace and the Little Ember and all the rest of them. If they’d just left her to her own devices, she wouldn’t be here now—a vagabond among a plane with nothing at all in it. She could blame them for everything...

_Except_ , said a voice she’d done everything in her power to drown in the past, _you were the one who kept letting them back in._

Liliana screamed. Images flashed behind her mind; her ears ached with the renewed symphony of screams. Again she felt the weight of Gideon’s hand—and the coursing warmth of his invulnerability passing to her.

She’d been prepared to die and the moronic beefsteak had taken that away! How dare he! How dare any of them cut into her life and make her feel!

Her fingers curled into the ground. She couldn’t bring him back; she could do nothing. Hers was a gift of puppetry, not of rebirth. And Gideon had gone farther than the realm of death. He’d been annihilated—the clause meant for Liliana to pay.

Dust slid between Liliana’s fists. For the first time since she’d fled from Ravnica, she felt a stirring of potential. Not of life—but of possibility. She looked round her once more. Nothing lived her. Nothing had ever lived her but dust; and what was dust but the detritus of life? Dead skin; dead fiber. Deadness as vast as an ocean.

The spark soared overhead. It stared down—an observant star, and watched as Liliana strode through the refuse. Behind her, pillars rose; arches met and buttresses criss-crossed. A palace to dwarf Elfhame formed at her back, gray as a mountain and just as indomitable.

Her home. She had a home now. She’d always had one here.

Figures emerged from around her. At first, they rose formless and lumpy as clay. But as the voices in her head spoke new threads into her mind, each took shape. There was Jace, cape billowing, that furrowed brow in constant thought. Ajani, mane flowing in an invisible wind, flashed a fang-toothed smile; Chandra smirked; Nissa inclined her head. What did it matter that she’d never truly allied herself with them? They were among the only factions of the living who’d ever been present in her life.

And before her, tall as a tree and strong as an ox, the perfect idiot who’d tried to take her place. But he hadn’t succeeded. Not really. If she was here now, and so was he, then all that had transpired on Ravnica hadn’t ever come to pass...

Gray as slate, Gideon held his arms out. Liliana tossed her head back in a laugh that reached the ears of nothing and no one.

Of course she would deign to dance with him. Her hands slipped into his. He pulled her close; and his chest did not give way. How could it? How could anything when it was all real here? This was far more substantial than what she’d walked away from because she could invent it—it could spring from her mind like the courtyard taking shape around her.

Together, with their friends watching silently, Liliana, Architect of the Unliving, danced with her champion—her consort.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
